2019 News & Events

October 7-9, 2019

The UMI's Pima County International Man-Environment Observatory funded several projects again this year. Two of them were presented at the annual Labex DRIIHM seminar that took place in Lyon, France:

• "Cuéntame Mas: Tales from Tumamoc" is a project run by Benjamin Wilder, Javier Duran, Christian Ruvalcaba, Yadira Caballero and Michelle Aguilera of the University of Arizona.
• The second poster, "Socio-ecological issues of stream restoration in the semi-arid American Southwest: the case of the Santa Cruz River in Tucson", won a prize. This study was done by Claire Néel and Anne-Lise Boyer who are French students at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon.

The course covered everything from the basics of plant ecophysiology to ecosystem-scale monitoring to remote sensing to applying ecological theory in human-dominated ecosystems, and we ended the week with hands-on learning about photosynthesis and leaf traits, using the historic Jardin des Plantes as a field site. Students were able to work in a part of the Jardin not open to the public - an incredible experience even for the local Parisian students.  Overall the course provided the students insights from UA faculty and an opportunity to utilize equipment not readily available at ENS, and gave Saleska and Barron-Gafford a chance to interact with ENS students and craft a course designed for a 1-week, intensive setting - something not typically available at UA.  

In certain regulated areas (Active Management Areas – AMA), irrigation grandfathered rights limit how much water farmers can draw out from underground. They have been in existence since the 1980 Groundwater Management Act which was one of the pioneering measures of Arizona’s water management policies, put in place during a crisis when water resources had been excessively exploited, particularly those underground which require a long natural cycle to replenish themselves. 

Their research questioned the pertinence and the sustainability of these rights today –forty years after local water regulation was put in place for agricultural irrigation -, and has led them to meet face to face with local stakeholders who manage this precious resource. 

July 4, 2019

It’s the end of the line for these adventurers on the Guiana rivers after overcoming several unexpected difficulties. Hear about it in this new blog by François-Michel Le Tourneau.

Pictured: 4 in a canoe...not yet the Raft of the Medusa, but we're getting there!

UMI Director Regis Ferrière is awarded Research, Discovery & Innovation's Accelerate for Success grant titled Sonoran Soundscapes: Using sound processing and machine learning to capture our sound environment and understand its evolution. 

Soundscapes form the acoustic environments experienced by human populations. They comprise a dense high-dimensional array of information about geophysical, ecological, and human phenomena,  and provide us with a novel approach to human-environment feedbacks. The analysis of soundscapes and their variation across space and time requires new methods to characterize and identify global spatio-temporal patterns in very large data sets. Specifically, we need real-time “intelligent” algorithms that can detect known or emerging acoustic patterns and control the recording process. The present project aims at initiating the development of machine learning methods able to identify patterns in soundscapes of the Sonoran desert environments. 

François-Michel Le Tourneau was able to meet with the illegal gold miners (Garimpos), a commerce that is destructive to the environment, but which is hard to eradicate because they are so well organized.

French Guiana has a lot of gold and the Brazilian Garimpos have their own effective techniques to extract it from the rivers. It is an economic system all its own, with villages popping up to resupply them, provide entertainment and jobs, and in return these miners spend their money. All of this illegally.

The environment suffers from this activity: deforestation, huge quantities of sediments and mercury released into the river, creating ecological mutations. The Guiana army (FAG) has attempted to get rid of them by destroying their equipment, but the Garimpos are resilient and have found ways to adapt and limit their losses.

Dr. Daniel Apai, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences is collaborating on the the project Life and living in exoplanetary environments led by Régis Ferrière (UMI iGLOBES, UA, ENS/PSL) in partnership with IRIS PSL Origine et Conditions d’Apparition de la Vie coordinated by Stéphane Mazevet (Paris Observatory/PSL). 

For more information on Daniel, see the UA webpage or visit his site where you will find his bio, research projects and blogs. 

One of the objectives of this expedition is to study different types of palm trees located in the ancient sites that have been occupied and in the "enthroned mountain" regions. Why? For the past twenty years, scientists have realized that the amazon forest is not the virgin forest described by the Europeans of the 17th and 18th century, but rather that human presence has influenced its make-up by moving dozens of species.

Guillaume Odonne, an ethnoecologist, has been collecting samples, looking for the presence of pioneer species that are the first to colonize previously biodiverse steady-state ecosystems and the slower growing, but longer lasting species that arrive later in the cycle of growth. 

June 11, 2019

After a capsizing, a scorpion bite and some strong rapids, all are doing well. They are in high spirits and have arrived at the mouth of the Inipi river.

So, who were the first explorers that took this route back in 1674? Father Jean Grillet and François Béchamel were Jesuit missionnaries who, with the help of the indigenous people, were the first to explore deep into French Guiana. They helped bring to light the physical and human geography of the country.

May 17, 2019

From June 5th to July 5th, François-Michel Le Tourneau and Guillaume Odonne, a French researcher with CNRS, will be paddling through history: first going the same way the 1st French expedition went in 1674, then by the migration route the natives took and who are currently living near the Oyapock.

Accompanied by the military unit the French Foreign Legion, this expedition done in total autonomy will enable them to obtain a deeper knowledge of regional territorial control, clandestin activities and biodiversity, while also responding to a request by traditional leaders wanting to find sites that were occupied by their ancestors on the way that led them to the Oyapock river. 

This project fits into CNRS' celebration of 80 years of scientific research. Regular updates will be posted on this page.

Axel Rodriguez gave a presentation at the Tree-Ring Lab on his research on how shifting climate conditions may affect tree growth, with consequences ranging from stand productivity to forest ecological diversity and function. As the global temperature rises, tree growth at the tree line is likely to either increase if the trees are temperature limited or decrease if climate change driven droughts trigger a detrimental loss of moisture. Dendrochronological techniques (the dating of tree-rings) were used to investigate the dominant climate controls of the alpine tree line ecotones on the South Eastern part of the Alps, focusing on the Larix decidua because it is competition intolerant and cold adapted which makes it a good candidate for strong climate signals. View his presentation.

The spread of disease through human populations is complex. The characteristics of disease propagation evolve with time, as a result of a multitude of environmental and anthropic factors. Non-stationarity is a key factor in this huge complexity. In the absence of appropriate external data sources, to correctly describe the disease propagation, we explore a flexible approach, based on stochastic models for the disease dynamics, and on diffusion processes (Brownian processes) for the parameter dynamics. Coupled with particle MCMC, this approach allows us to reconstruct the time evolution of some key parameters of an epidemiological dynamic. 

UQ Group seminars are every Wednesday at 2pm in ENR2 S395.

Bernard Cazelles, a pioneer in innovative statistical approaches and tools for ecological data modeling, will give a talk at the Tree-Ring Lab seminar on "Accounting for non-stationarity when analyzing ecological time series ", 12-1pm, Bannister 110. 

Long-term changes in climate, human demography and/or social features of human populations have considerable effects on the dynamics of numerous epidemics. Wavelet analysis appears very attractive as a first step to exploring the complexity of both the population dynamics and their links with environmental signals before the modeling stage. 

April 5, 2019

Lisa Vincent, a visiting master's student doing an internship at the UMI, is presenting her research on Soundscapes at the Women in Data Science conference. The conference aims to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and to support women in the field.

Watch the video of her presentation.

April 4, 2019

Axel Rodriguez, a UMI collaborator who is doing research at the Tree-Ring Lab, explains to the UMI team what dendrochronology means, i.e. the scientific method of dating tree rings to the exact year they were formed. This method was formally established with the creation of the Lab in 1937 and can also give data on atmospheric conditions during different periods in history.

The oldest living tree is in California, but its location is kept secret. It is a 5068 year old Great Basin Bristlecone Pine.

The workshop started with a presentation by Dr. Christian Lorenzi, Professor at the Department of Cognitive Studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, on "Temporal modulation processing by the human auditory system".

Then followed short presentations by François-Michel Le Tourneau (CNRS), "What are soundscapes?", Lisa Vincent (ENS), "Soundscapes Analysis" and Pierre Deymier, UA Department Head of Materials Science and Engineering, "Topological Acoustic Sensing".

In celebration of CNRS' 80 years, MITI (Transverse and Interdisciplinary Action) put in place a call for papers at the end of 2018, 80|Prime (Inter-institutes, multi-team research project). As in all of its projects, the goal is to support original, interdisciplinary projects that break new ground and require a combined expertise of at least two laboratories from two different CNRS institutes.

Régis Ferrière, Director of the UMI and PI of the project, is one of the 80 winners this year for his project "The Emergence and Dynamics of Cultures of Cooperation: Mathematical Modeling in the Context of Climate Change and Climate Extremes". 

Water management is among the most pressing issues in Arizona and throughout the Southwest. Elected officials and business leaders rely on world-class research to make crucial water-related decisions that will have significant generational impacts. The University of Arizona's influence in water studies has been recognized by the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities as the world's No. 1 program in water resources. Read more...

Did you know that this topic is part of the UMI's scientific program? 

February 28, 2019

Visiting French researchers Arnaud Banos and Lisa Vincent gave a presentation on the soundscape project.

What methods should be used to differentiate soundscapes? Are there variations between day and night sounds? How does one tackle the challenge of transparency since sound events are not separate on a spectrogram, but rather summed up together into a whole? 

Visiting French researcher Marie-Esther Lacuisse, working on the Pima County Observatory project, joined the Pima Association of Governments’ Cienaga Creek hydraulic monitoring program. PAG members include the Cities of South Tucson and Tucson, the Towns of Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita, Pima County, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the Tohono O'odham Nation and the Governor-appointed Pima County representative of the Arizona State Transportation Board. Its mission is to address regional issues through cooperative efforts and pooled resources, and to provide accurate, relevant data that leads to effective regional planning decisions. Four times a year, it controls the evolution of the hydraulic resources in Cienaga Creek and Davidson Canyon. As part of her post-doc study on the opposition to the opening of the Rosemont mine, Marie-Esther participated in this endeavor in order to see the natural environment that surrounds the future site of the mine.